The fiction studies included in this volume have been gleaned from past
issues of Unisa English Studies (the journal of the English Department of
the University of South Africa), Crux (published by the Foundation for
Education, Science and Technology in Pretoria, South Africa), and
Communiqué (the journal of the language Bureau of the University of the
North in South Africa). The author was himself the editor of Unisa English
Studies and Communiqué, and for ten years was Professor and Head of the
Department of English at the University of the North.

While the studies on Wilkie Collins, Charles Reade and Graham Greene were
originally published in academic journals, the studies that appeared in
Crux (on Dickens, George Eliot, Joseph Conrad and H.G.Wells) were written
with high school students in mind. These studies may therefore be more
'popular' in style and content than those which appeared in the academic
journals. It is hoped, however, that in bringing together these somewhat
diverse studies, this volume will appeal to a wider range of readers than
would be represented by a strictly 'academic' readership.

From the Author
In selecting the studies the author has attempted to see a
continuity in the development of fiction over the past one hundred and
fifty years, especially concerning character portrayal and theme.

When fiction became an article of mass production following the rise of a
new reading public after the Industrial Revolution, the demand was
primarily for entertainment. This might account for such ingredients as
horror and crime in the Victorian sensation story. The popularity of
melodrama to the virtual exclusion of psychological exposition in character
portrayal was, for many of the Victorian critics, a symptom of the
deterioration in literary taste. More serious purveyors of fiction, or,
indeed, masters of fiction like Wilkie Collins, Charles Reade and Charles
Dickens, were not above using the appeal of melodrama for the dramatic
revelation of character. From the 'dramatic' melodrama of these authors it
is possible to see a line of development towards the psychological
melodrama that gives greater realism to the characters portrayed by modern
masters such as Joseph Conrad and Graham Greene. Conflicts within the
psyche of the main character - such as that which leads to the demise of
Scobie in Greene's Heart of the Matter - might be seen as an
internalization of an earlier melodramatic tradition, producing a new
intensification in dramatic character revelation.

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